Ban Ki-Moon's second term as the
Secretary General of the United Nations is ending this December. He was the
most ideal man for the job as far as the United States and its allies are
concerned.
Of course, there will always be other Ban
Ki-Moons. In fact, the man himself was a modified version of his predecessor,
Kofi Annan.
The unspoken, but unmistakable rule about
UN Secretary Generals is that they must come across as affable enough so as not
to be the cause of international controversies, but also flexible enough to
accommodate the US disproportionate influence over the United Nations,
particularly the Security Council.
At the end of their terms, the 'success'
or 'failure' of these Secretaries has been largely determined by their
willingness to play by the aforementioned rule: Boutros Boutros-Ghali had his
fallout with the US, as Kurt Waldheim also did. But both Annan and Ban learned
their lessons well and followed the script to the end of their terms.
It would be utterly unfair to pin the
blame for the UN's unmitigated failure to solve world conflicts or obtain any
real global achievement on a single individual. But Ban was particularly 'good'
at this job. It would be quite a challenge to produce another with his exact
qualities.
His admonishment of Israel, for example,
can come across as strong-worded and makes for a good media quote, yet his
inaction to confront Israel's illegal violations of numerous Resolutions passed
by the very UN he headed, is unmatched.
Even his purportedly strong words of
censure were often cleverly coded, which, ultimately, meant very little.
When Israel carried out its longest and
most devastating war on Gaza in the summer of 2014, a large number of
international law experts and civil society organizations signed a letter accusing the UN chief of
failing to clearly condemn Israel's unlawful action in the Occupied
Territories, its targeting of civilian homes, and even the bombing of UN
facilities, which killed and wounded hundreds.
The signatories included former UN
Special Rapporteur, Richard Falk, who, along with the others, called on Ban to
either stand for justice or resign. He did neither.
The signatories criticized him,
specifically, about Israeli shelling of a school managed by the UN agency for
Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), in which ten civilians were killed.
In his 'condemnation' of the Israeli
attack earlier, Ban even failed to mention Israel by name as the attacker, and
called on 'both parties' to provide protection for Palestinian civilians and UN
staff.
"Your statements have been either
misleading, because they endorse and further Israeli false versions of facts,
or contrary to the provisions established by international law and to the
interests of its defenders, or because your words justify Israel’s violations
and crimes," they wrote.
And they were right. This is Ban
Ki-Moon’s signature policy - his ability to sidestep having to criticize Israel
so cleverly (and, of course, the US and others) when that criticism could have,
when needed most, at least given a pause to those who violate international law
at will.
Considering this, many have
perceived Ban's farewell speech at the 71st session
of the UN General Assembly on September 15 as a departure from his old reserved
self. It was understood that it was the end of his term, and he was ready to
show some backbone, however belatedly. Sadly, this was not the case.
"It pains me that this past decade
has been lost to peace. Ten years lost to illegal settlement expansion. Ten
years lost to intra-Palestinian divide, growing polarization and
hopelessness," he surmised, as if both parties – the occupied and the
military occupier - were equally responsible for the bloodshed and that
Palestinians are equally blamed for their own military Occupation by Israel.
"This is madness," he
exclaimed. "Replacing a two-state solution with a one-state construct
would spell doom: denying Palestinians their freedom and rightful future, and
pushing Israel further from its vision of a Jewish democracy towards greater
global isolation.”
But again, no solid commitment either
way. Who is ‘replacing a two-state solution?’ and why would a ‘one state
reality’ – which incidentally happened to be the most humane and logical
solution to the conflict – ‘spell doom’? And why is Ban so keen on the ethnic
status of Israel’s ‘Jewish democracy’ vision, considering that it was Israel’s
demographic obsession that pushed Palestinians to live under military
Occupation or live under perpetual racial discrimination in Israel itself?
The fact is that there is more to Ban’s
muddled language than a UN chief who is desperately trying to find the balance
in his words, so that he may end his mission without registering any serious
controversies, or raise the ire of Israel and the US.
(Incidentally, Israeli Ambassador to
the UN, Danny Danon, still ranted against the
UN chief for calling Israel's illegal Jewish settlements 'illegal' in his
address. Other Israeli commentators raged against him for
being a 'liar'. Strange that even repeating old, irrefutable facts is still a
cause of anger in Israel.)
Yet again, this is not the matter of the
choice for words. A WikiLeaks document from August 2014 is
an excellent case in point.
According to the document released by
WikiLeaks, Ban collaborated secretly with the US to undermine a report issued
by the UN's own Board of Inquiry’s report on Israeli bombing of UN schools in
Gaza during the war of December 2008 - January 2009.
'Collaborated' is actually a soft
reference to that event, where Susan Rice - then the White House National
Security Adviser - called on him repeatedly to bury the report, not to bring it
to the Council for discussion and, eventually, to remove the strongly-phrased
recommendations of ‘deeper’ and ‘impartial’ investigations into the bombing of
the UN facilities.
When Ban explained to Rice that he was
constrained by the fact that the Board of Inquiry is an independent body, she told
him to provide a cover letter that practically disowns the recommendations as
ones that "exceeded the scope of the terms of reference and (that) no
further action is needed."
Ban Ki-Moon obliged.
When the UN chief is gone, he will be
missed – but certainly not by Palestinians in Gaza or refugees
in Syria, or war victims in Afghanistan. But by the likes of Susan Rice, whose
job was made very easy, when all she needed to do was merely instruct the chief
of the largest international organization on earth to do exactly as she wished;
and, for him, to gladly do so.
In his last visit to Palestine in June,
Ban Ki-Moon told distraught Gazans that the “UN will
always be with you.”
As tens of thousands there still stand on
the rubble of their own homes, denied freedom to move or rebuild, Ban Ki-Moon’s
statement is as forgettable as the man’s legacy at the United Nations.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He
is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of
several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com.
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